News - January 2003

Hulmy pointed out that Young Magazine has posted some an
advertisement on their web site for the new human-interest medical
drama,
The
Booking Life, which is quite a change of pace for Takada-sensei. Here is
my poor literal translation of both pages:

Pioneering in a new situation!
The new serialized story you've been waiting for!

Genuine medical human story
THE BOOKING LIFE

A three-issue and 81 page large volume, starting in issue 10!!

[page 2]
For 3x3 EYES creator Takada-sensei, a complete change from adventure romance
with a normal medical drama is a challenge!!
Until now, he had no experience with "hospital things", so starting from zero
he creates a "medical scene"!

[plot overview - tiny blue text]
"Zero mismatch", the coincidence of a perfect match of blood type, HLA
antigens, lymph nodes [and so on], out of 6 billion people, what are the odds
of finding another person just like you.

Attacked(?) during a robbery, his vital signs falling into a critical state,
Kusumi Kentaro, age 22, is rushed to the hospital.

"Is this heaven!?"

While regaining consciousness, he sees the angelic face of a beautiful girl!
Could Hasegawa Kirin, who came to keep him company, become a "zero mismatch"
heart donor?

Ten days later, a recovering Kusumi says to Kirin, "Your life... would you
sell it for 3000 yen?"

Kusumi suddenly tries to hire the organ transplant coordinator, Kisaragi Ryoko!
What is the true motive for Kisaragi!?

The story looks very intriguing, and no, I'm not sure what the title
"the booking life" might mean. Based on the small bits of
medical jargon in the ad, I would hate to try to read the whole manga.
Issue 10 of Young Magazine should go on sale in Japan next week. With only
three chapters, the story is probably too short to collect in a tankoubon, so
unless you can find the magazine, you might miss out.

First, sincere thanks go to David Copewell and Hulmy, who posted most of the
following news to the 3x3 Eyes Mailing List throughout 2002. It would have
been impossible for me to catch up on all of the happenings without
their help. Hulmy's web site is currently offline, but you can visit
David Copewell's site at http://fly.to/shibai
for more information.

After appearing for nearly 15 years in the pages of Young
Magazine, the final chapter of 3x3 Eyes was
published on September 9, 2002. The special edition of the magazine
included a small mousepad, a short comic titled "Fight! Yuzo",
and a CD-ROM containing some mini-games. I don't have much to say
about how the series ends, since I haven't seen the last chapter yet.

3x3
Eyes #39 and
3x3
Eyes #40, the last volumes of collected manga, were both released on
November 6, 2002. Volume 40 contains an extra chapter that
did not appear in Young Magazine, and there was also a
limited
special edition of vol. 40 that included a CD-ROM with mini-games,
reportedly different from the magazine CD-ROM.

Also published on the
same day was 3x3
Eyes The Final, billed as the last, best 3x3 Eyes guidebook. The
200-page book contains a revealing 66-page interview with
Takada-sensei, where he divulges never-before-published secrets about the
series, including answers to the questions most asked by hardcore fans. It
also contains farewell messages from the publishing staff
and the people behind the anime and games, including a special talk with
voice actors Megumi Hayashibara and Kouji Tsujitani.

Now that the big news is out of the way, I'll review some of the events
since my last update in February 2001. Dark Horse and Studio Proteus have
continued to publish new translated 3x3 Eyes chapters in
Super Manga Blast!, which is up to issue #27 as of today. Two 3x3 Eyes trade
paperbacks have been available from Dark Horse for some time, but starting
in November 2001 they began to publish new trade paperbacks
collecting the SMB! chapters. The latest book was just released earlier
this month. Here are the books published so far:

In April and May 2002, Kodansha published some special oversized
manga volumes containing the early chapters of the 3x3 Eyes manga.
These books were titled Shinsouban 3x3 Eyes, meaning enhanced or
refurbished edition. The books have the same page dimensions as the regular
manga volumes, but they are much thicker, corresponding to two or three of
the regular volumes. The four books contain the same manga chapters as the
first 11 regular books; in other words, the first three story arcs before the
"Trinetra" story arc. The Kodansha web site has pages (in Japanese) for
book 1,
book 2,
book 3, and
book 4,
as well as a
special
first edition of book 1 that comes in an illustrated box with a T-shirt and postcard set.

On December 13, 2002, Nihon Create released
3x3
Eyes Memorial, a special edition (limited to 3,333 copies) of their
three PC games on DVD-ROM. In addition the the games, the
set contains a "treasure" DVD movie, an illustrated box capable of
holding 4 DVDs, a desk calendar with images not previously used, and 2 of 6
possible character badges (pins?). You'll notice an Amazon link on the Nihon
Create site, and you can order books internationally, but they won't ship
the game outside of Japan.

Now that Takada-sensei is not busy creating new 3x3 Eyes manga chapters every
week, what is he doing? Well, he has started new chapters of the
Genzo Hitogata Kiwa manga, which is published monthly in
Afternoon magazine. Enough new chapters have been created that
Genzo #3
collected volume was published on December 20, 2002. In addition to this
outdated 3x3 Eyes site, I also have a badly-outdated Genzo site called
Puppet's Heart, where I will try
to post more information on this title soon.

The latest Takada-related news in the USA is the upcoming release of
Cat Girl Nuku Nuku on DVD from AD Vision. The bilingual
release will be available on February 11. If you didn't know, the Blue
Seed anime is already available as a Perfect Collection DVD set containing
all 26 episodes.